BEFORE: I've still got a couple weeks until September, but it's time to start my back-to-school films. (People are shopping for school supplies now, right?) This year I'm connecting to three school-related films, but I wasn't able to connect them to each other. So I'll review the first one today, the second will come in about a week, and then the third a couple of days after that. And as a bonus, the first one is set in a high-school, the second is about a high-school student applying for college, and the third one will be set at a college - so it's important that they're in the proper order.
Catherine Keener carries over from her (non-)appearance in "Bad Grandpa", and I did a whole Steve Coogan chain last year - 6 films, but the guy must get a lot of work, because I happened to find three more, so here goes. With the other films I've seen or heard him in, he'll probably finish this year with another 6 appearances.
AFTER: Maybe it's me, maybe I'm a little screwed up after watching things like "Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie" and "Bad Grandpa", because I feel now like I might be more concerned about tone than content. Shouldn't it be enough that a comedy film be funny, am I now so demanding that a film has to be funny "in the right way"? Why can't I just turn off my mind, relax and float downstream, why am I so hung up on defining HOW funny something is, or what exactly it is about a film that counteracts the funny?
My point is, it's hard to get a read on this film where tone is concerned. Are we meant to take it completely seriously? Because there's plenty of stuff in it that's more silly than serious. Or is it a well-intentioned metaphor for racial politics and other "politically correct issues"? Or is it all one big wink at the audience that's not meant to be taken literally at all? It's kind of like that guy you see on the subway train or the bus, dressed like a total hipster douchebag, with arms full of tattoos and the moussed-up hair, ratty jean shorts and work boots. Does he KNOW how much of a jerk-off he resembles, or did it just sort of happen organically? Does that really represent who he is at his core, or is he dressing to conform to an arbitrary set of rules that just helps him get more gigs or something? Even if you ask him, you may never learn the answer...
We live in confusing times - it feels right to stand against racism, sexism, ageism and any other kind of bias or unfairness we encounter. Yet often we find ourselves laughing at people who are making fun of being "politically correct" (as if that phrase isn't an inherent contradiction). Are we laughing because we spend so much time trying to navigate around delicate topics, and it's refreshing to hear someone speak so plainly after all that? Or does the humor help to mask or day-to-day discomfort or fear? And the ultimate extension of this, which came up last week in the news - is it OK to punch a Nazi? Should we meet violence with more violence, or does this just make everything worse? Or if we preach tolerance, do we need to find a way to be tolerant ourselves, even with regard to intolerant people? Does "free speech" protect hate speech? Do people have a right to be wrong, as we currently define that? I think these are complicated questions with difficult answers to debate.
So I have to just judge this film's story for what it seems to be, since I can't get inside the mind of its author. Thankfully we don't get a lot of "writer staring at a blank page, trying to write" tropes, but there is some measure of that. I think instead the teacher character just forged ahead in a solitary direction with his story, as misguided as that sounds, and with the mixed results that we (sort of) get to see at the end. But since we've all seen so many "Hey, let's put on a SHOW!" movies before, is that why this movie sort of feels like it's been pieced together from other films?
First off, the drama teacher has been adapting Hollywood films like "Erin Brokovich" and "Mississippi Burning" into high-school stage plays - doesn't that sound a lot like the teen from "Rushmore" who adapted movies like "Serpico" into plays? And when discussing drama in general, this teacher references movies like "Mr. Holland's Opus", "Dead Poets Society" and "Dangerous Minds", which were also set in high schools - so I can't tell if they're trying to just reference those films, or threaten to parody them somehow. Then we've got the presence of Elisabeth Shue, who plays herself, and tells the students about her experiences making "The Karate Kid" and "Leaving Las Vegas". Finally, we've got the finished production of "Hamlet 2" itself, which throws together music from "Flashdance", a lightsaber battle and the wire-work from "Kill Bill" plus the time-traveling format of "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure", only with Jesus and Einstein thrown into the mix.
Honestly, I can't decide if the point was to make this endeavor (the play within the film) succeed or fail - maybe a little bit of both? Did it eventually fail upwards to become a success? Or was this all engineered to make a larger point about civil liberties and the freedom of speech? Or, again, just to spoof things like "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "Grease" and "Rent" to make the ultimate mash-up production? It's hard because we see very little of the play in the conclusion, and I'm not sure if someone just didn't want to take the time to write the whole play-within-the-play, or if someone decided that less was more, and things were best left up to the audience's imagination. I guess in a way, the content of the play doesn't really matter, but then in another way, of course it does - so I'm really split on a decision here.
I think in general this film was all around being "about" something - it came close to making a larger point, but I'm not sure it succeeded in doing so at the end. A little more exposition about whether the play was "good" or "bad" might have gone a long way, but in the end we're forced to wonder what it is we've just witnessed. I guess that's how I feel about Steve Coogan in general - often his characters are so over-the-top that I can't really get a read on what he's all about, which makes me wonder if he's even there at all. Does that make sense?
NITPICK POINT: The jump-off point for making the new stage-play is the fact that suddenly a lot of students have enrolled in drama class, since the other arts-related classes have been cut from the school's program. But why would a school cut all of the arts classes except for one? If there's no art budget, then they would have cancelled ALL of the arts classes - then throughout the film, the principal is constantly threatening to shut down drama, but if he wants to do this, why doesn't he follow through? Furthermore, why cut the arts programs but keep the requirement that all of the students have to take an arts class? This makes no sense - the school board wouldn't force kids to take classes that don't exist, logically if they remove the classes, there would be no requirement to take them.
Also starring Steve Coogan (last heard in "The Secret Life of Pets"), David Arquette (last seen in "Ready to Rumble"), Elisabeth Shue (last seen in archive footage in "Back in Time", probably), Amy Poehler (last heard in "Inside Out"), Skylar Astin (last seen in "Pitch Perfect 2"), Marshall Bell (last seen in "Comic Book Villains"), Nat Faxon (last seen in "Tammy"), Phoebe Strole, Melonie Diaz (last seen in "Be Kind Rewind"), Joseph Soria, Arnie Pantoja, Natalie Amenula, Michael Esparza, Shea Pepe, Josh Berry (last seen in "Lone Survivor"), Arron Shiver, Marco Rodriguez (last seen in "Nightcrawler"), Deborah Chavez.
RATING: 5 out of 10 days sober
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